Summer of Love, a Time Travel Read online

  A great, glossy man bends over the flatbed, backlit by the sun’s glare. A mountain man, chiseled and fierce. His proud chin declines a beard. His creamy suede shirt is unbuttoned to his chest, his jeans slung low on lean hips.

  “Well, hello, flower child. The Celebration of the Summer Solstice awaits you.” He sweeps his hand over the meadow as if granting it to her. His gray eyes flicker all over her, sizing her up. His smile is dazzling.

  Before she can catch her breath, he turns and strides away.

  Foxy lady? Flower child?

  Susan climbs off the flatbed, crouches, wipes dust from a bumper, and peers at her reflection distorted in the curve of chrome. Her hair is a fright-wig, her pale face unwashed. She slaps some color in her cheeks, bites her lips. Gross.

  She can practically hear her mother clucking her tongue. Even in the best of circumstances, nothing about Susan is ever right. Nothing is ever good enough. That cold disapproval mixed with… .what? Some terrible, nameless thing her mother holds against her, no matter how hard she tries.

  Where is Nance? She’d signed the postcard, “Penny Lane,” but Susan would know her scrawl anywhere. Where is her best friend, the only person she knows in San Francisco? She figured she would step off the 6 Parnassus bus, and there Nance would be, a Kool dangling from her laughing lip.

  Now she doesn’t know where to start.

  She stands, fighting despair, near tears.

  The mountain man is looking at her from across the field. He grins when he catches her glance and waves grandly, come on! He’s a magnet, a good-luck charm. No boy she’s ever met comes even close. Is he really waving at her? She looks over her shoulder, to the right, to the left. Yes, at her!

  The truck is parked at the edge of a broad tree-lined meadow in Golden Gate Park. Small wooden stages, frail against the backdrop of ancient eucalyptus trees, are set up here and there on the unkempt grass. Bands are already playing, the reedy voices and guitar twangs nearly lost in the air. Even the drumbeats are diminished, but Susan knows their sounds, their songs, and all of their names: the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service.

  A man in a Mickey Mouse cap perched over his wrinkled forehead leaps about, blowing soap bubbles from an oversized hoop. A boy of perhaps ten, his face painted with blue stars, straddles a girl of perhaps eight, her face painted with pink flowers, and pumps his hips against hers. No one pays them the slightest attention.

  Who is young? Who is old?

  Susan’s stomach somersaults at the scent of hamburgers grilling. She hasn’t eaten a thing since the Swanson’s TV dinner the maid left after her parents went out last night.

  Then something odd shifts at the corner of her eye. A hooded cape? Strange sparks? Over there! In the dappled shade behind the trees. A freezing breeze strikes her face.

  Susan whirls, ready to flee.

  People are laughing by the barbecue pits. A cook drops a patty of raw meat on the grass, retrieves it, and throws it back on a rusty grill. A reveler offers a paper plate to receive his dirtburger.

  But there’s nothing behind the trees. Nothing at all.

  *

  Susan catches up with the mountain man halfway across the meadow. She stands several paces away, suddenly struck with shyness.

  He’s speaking with an imperious woman who stands nearly six feet tall. Curly black hair forms a nimbus around her face. Sparkling dark eyes, high cheekbones, and full lips are set in smooth skin the color of coffee with extra cream. Her squash blossom turquoise-and-silver necklace looks groovy with her sweeping dress of turquoise cotton. Nice. If Susan’s mother has taught her anything, it’s how to spot Nice.

  “I want my calculating machine,” the woman is saying. She does not speak, she proclaims. “I want it back today.”

  “No can do.” Stan beams at her, but his eyes flash with anger. “Got one more shipment coming next week. Got to figure the numbers.”

  “No! No more shipments, no more! I won’t cover for you, Stan. Not ever again.”

  “Say hey, Ruby A. Maverick.” He drops his smile. “We made a deal. Take the calculating machine, you said. Take it as long as I need it, you said. Well, I need it. And I’m keeping it. You’ll get it back when you get it back.”

  “No deal,” Ruby says. “The deal is off.”

  “One more shipment. You have my word.”

  “Your word.”

  Susan shifts the overnight bag to her other hand, embarrassed. Mom and Daddy fight. Always voices behind closed doors. What do they fight about? She’s not sure. Sometimes Susan can’t sleep all night after hearing them argue, sensing their muffled rage.

  Stan turns to two other men standing nearby. The first is another god-man, towering and razor-thin in patched jeans and a threadbare workshirt. He’s been-around-town tough, his boyish features dusted with poverty. A fisherman’s cap tilts over his abundant brown curls and a gold-tone earring gleams in his earlobe.

  “Help me out here, Gorgon,” Stan says. “You’re a man of many words. Talk some sense into the woman.”

  Gorgon shrugs. “Your calculating machine is just private property, Ruby. Ownership of private property is the phony crap upon which this society of greed is based. What’s the big deal?”

  “That’s just it, Leo,” Ruby snaps. “He’s using my calculating machine to deal.”

  The second man is positively frail in a loose purple shirt and grass-stained jeans two sizes too large for him. Grime cakes his bare feet. His aquiline nose and cheekbones jut from a complexion as pale as Dracula’s. A brass door knocker strung on a leather thong hangs over his sunken chest.

  “That’s your reality, Ruby,” the stickman says in that flat affect. Professor Zoom’s eyes are all pupil; Susan can’t even tell their color. “Dealing is in your mind. Dealing is your mind. Deal your mind, Ruby.”

  “Go back to Harvard, Harold,” Ruby says. “You’re a full-of-shit philosopher.”

  “Don’t call me names,” Professor Zoom says. “Besides, I’m not full of shit. I’m full of Owsley white lightning.”

  It’s a sight to see. Amid the laughing, leaping people, Ruby’s anger burns. That feels wrong to Susan. Yet these men are intent on defusing her. That feels wrong, too. It’s confusing.

  Suddenly they all notice her, hovering at the edge of their circle.

  “Foxy lady!” Stan greets her as if she’s a long-lost friend. He stoops and plants a bold kiss on her mouth. Not the sloppy stuff Bernie MacKenna or Allen Weisberg have tried in the darkness of the Cedar Center Theater. A real kiss, insistent and expert. She is petrified and elated.

  She wants… .she’s not sure what she wants. She forgets herself for the long moments he takes to kiss her. Forgets her messy hair, her unwashed face. She’s a foxy lady. Mindless, such a smart girl. And numb, except for a spot somewhere north of her thighs. If she had to give it name just now, she might call it her heart.

  He scoops her under his arm and sweeps her into the circle, depositing her in their midst. “Meet our newest flower child.”

  Ruby glares at her. “Uh-huh. What’s your name, flower child?”

  “St-Starbright.”

  “Starbright. Let me see, Starbright. You just blew into town from some burb outside Chicago. Right, am I right?”

  “C-Cleveland.”

  “Daddy’s a vice president. Or, say, a doctor.”

  “Dentist,” Susan whispers.

  “Ruby’s psychic,” Professor Zoom says. Just the facts, ma’am.

  “Speak up, Starbright. A dentist. A real sadist, right? Beats up everybody’s mind at home. Everybody uptight all the time.”

  Susan studies the squash blossom necklace. They are uptight all the time. She can’t stand it anymore.

  “Eat good.” Ruby circles her. “Maybe a little too good. Got your own li’l bedroom painted purple. Beatles’ posters thumbtacked to the walls.”

  Susan stares. Her bedroom is painted lavender, actually, and her mother yelled at her a
bout the thumbtacks ruining the paint job.

  “And you’ve come all the way to the Haight-Ashbury to find your soul ‘cause sure ain’t no soul in Cleveland.”

  “I’ve come to find Penny Lane,” she declares.

  “Penny… .oh, now I see. Another darling daughter from the soulless ‘burbs. Name’s really Joanie or Nancy. And she’s run away to the Haight-Ashbury to find her soul.”

  Tears pool in her eyes, and Susan blinks them back.

  “Go home, Starbright,” Ruby commands. “Sally or Suzy or whoever you are. Go home to your purple bedroom and three square meals a day. I’d love to sell you a string of beads for triple what they’re worth. Damn right, I would, Leo.” She glares at Gorgon and rubs her thumb across her fingers. “But you and your kind were old news last summer. You hear me, kid? It’s 1967. You are old news.”

  “But it’s all new to me!”

  “You’re too late. There’s no place for you in the Haight-Ashbury. Cleveland needs you more. Go home.”

  “No!” How dare this woman bully her! Susan’s tears dry up. Her stutter steadies. “I’m never going home.”

  “Beautiful.” Ruby throws up her hands in exasperation. “Another teenybopper for Stan the Man. That’s just beautiful.” She turns and strides away. “Have a ball,” she calls over her shoulder.

  “Bummer, Ruby,” Professor Zoom yells after her.

  “She’s got a point about the calculating machine,” Gorgon says to Stan. He takes off after Ruby like a wolf chasing prey.

  “Methinks Sir Leo the Gorgon intends to pick up the piece, as it were,” Professor Zoom says to Stan.

  Stan wraps his arm around Susan’s shoulders, but he’s staring after Ruby, his expression now a mix of anger and longing. “Yeah. Well. That’s her karma, the bitch.”

  “Not bitch, my good Stan. Ruby is a witch.” Professor Zoom takes a corncob pipe from his shirt pocket and lights it with a Bic. “Don’t be attached, my son. Nothing is real. Reality is nothing.”

  Stan laughs. “Professor Zoom is a very wise man,” he says to Susan. To Professor Zoom, “I’m not attached. I just never saw a Digger anarchist make it with a hip merchant. Leo Gorgon and Ruby A. Maverick? Maybe they’ll off each other.”

  “Life is but a dream and an awakening,” Professor Zoom says. The smoke curling out of his pipe smells like burnt chocolate. “I am content if Ruby offs Leo Gorgon. I am content if Leo offs Ruby A. Maverick. I am content if they off you.”

  “Or you?” Stan says.

  “Try some white Lebanese pollen.” Professor Zoom hands the pipe to Stan. “If it’s you, bequeath to me the calculating machine. I’m still searching for the Final Expression to my Equation proving that God is a hit of blotter.”

  Susan doesn’t understand a word they’re saying. It all sounds so silly. She shivers and leans against Stan’s sturdy warmth. He hugs her back, quick and natural. When did anyone last hug her? Maybe Nance before Susan moved to the new neighborhood a year ago. Body heat, oh the comfort of arms. She snuggles closer, glancing up at his face.

  He winks at Professor Zoom as he hands back the pipe.

  “Methinks the sweet pretty pussy is very hungry and very, very thirsty,” Professor Zoom says. He gazes at Susan with eyes like tunnels boring into his skull. What happens in there? “Let’s go trip with the Double Barrel Boogie Band.”

  Stan says, “Right on.”

  *

  The Double Barrel Boogie Band is setting up.

  Susan can hardly believe her eyes. It’s them. It’s really them! On the bass drum, two circles conjoin like a shotgun snout or the symbol of infinity. She and Nance love the Double Barrel. They brought Let’s Boogie Boogie to Cheryl Long’s fourteenth birthday party, took off the Beach Boys, and danced with each other all night.

  That’s Paul sitting down at the keyboards. Mickey on drums, Stevie on bass, Rodg the Dodg on lead guitar. The Double Barrel Boogie Band! Wow!

  Then something even more amazing happens. Stan the Man hops up onto the stage, just like that. He slaps hands all around. He confers with Rodg the Dodg, barks orders at two scruffy boys connecting wires and setting up equipment. He hops down, strides behind the stage. Three beautiful girls pose there dressed in velvet and lace, whispering and laughing. They stare at Susan through false eyelashes so thick they look like caterpillars.

  Susan is shaking so hard, the overnight bag wobbles in her clenched fist. Nance, oh Nance, where are you when I need you?

  The band’s set begins. Stan returns to her, wraps his arm around her shoulders. A woman in a see-through blouse calls to him from the crowd. Her breasts bounce as she waves, but Stan smiles only at Susan, his eyes lingering on her breasts nestled inside her jacket, sweater, blouse, and bra.

  Deafening chords of “Drop a Double Barrel” assault her eardrums.

  Stan shouts in her ear, “How old are you, Starbright?”

  She’s ready with that answer. “I’m eighteen.”

  He laughs. “So am I.”

  Professor Zoom squats at the foot of the stage, ladling juice from a wide-mouthed jug, and handing out paper cups to passersby. “Orange juice? Free orange juice?”

  Stan brings her a brimming cup.

  Susan takes the cup, annoyed. How stupid does he think she is? He’s not eighteen any more than she is. More like twenty-eight. She can never guess people’s ages between young and ancient but, from his weathered, leathered look up close, he doesn’t seem a whole lot younger than her father.

  He is nothing like her father.

  She drinks the juice. Yum. She loves orange juice. It tastes a little strange, but she’s parched and she gulps the whole cup. “May I have some more, please?”

  “You can have anything you want, Starbright,” Stan says.

  Professor Zoom ladles out bright juice, the soupspoon spilling. Bees buzz, free sweets. Yum. Susan toasts a dew-stained boy in blue, a cute college couple all in denim, a fat girl in a gauzy pink gown. She toasts a towering barbarian in a fur hat and a vest that says “Hells Angels” on the back, a dainty fellow in a scarlet wig and a ballerina’s tutu, a black guy in a beret and a leather jacket. Buzz, buzz.

  Another cup to Starbright with a smile.

  A cup with a smile.

  A cup does smile, if you hold it just so. A cup has a mouth. Why shouldn’t it smile?

  The band is wailing, the day is sailing, but her throat is getting gulpy. Is she catching something? Maybe the flu?

  Then she’s sick, sick, her stomach pitching, rolling around. Stan the Man bends over her, his hand on her throat, and presses his thumb in the soft spot between her collarbones.

  Sitting. Suddenly. Rank dandelion smell, mud like dog waste. Monkey hands rest on her thighs. Thighs like sausages, stuffed skin over bones breathing like alien things. The monkey hands are her hands, hands just like the monkey in her biology textbook with electrodes stuck in its poor little skull. She had wept when she saw that monkey. She weeps now. She is a trapped little monkey. She is.

  She feels her heart thundering, squeezing blood into her head. Her breath wheezes through her mouth. What about the girl with her face, only it’s all wrong? What if the girl comes now on the wings of a bat, sparks crackling off her fingertips? A rushing noise deafens Susan’s ears. Is she falling off the hillside? Falling for sure, this time?

  There are no bats, the man’s voice reassures her. There is no hillside, Starbright.

  Another wave of emotion crashes over her.

  Sobs tear from her throat. Granma! Granma who loved her, the only one who ever had. Her eyes that had twinkled just for Susan. Granma with tubes up her nose, tubes in her arms, impossibly thin. Her frightened eyes, her fear terrifying. The awful smell, the light too bright. And there was nothing Susan could do. Granma, this cannot be happening to you. Granma, don’t leave me, please, please.

  Is she screaming?

  She hears singing. People are singing. The stickman in the purple shirt is singing. The barbarian with Hells Angels on his vest
is singing. The mountain man, he’s singing. He beams at her, beaming right into her soul. He smiles and smiles and sings and sings like he knows she cannot hear him until she hears him:

  First there is a Starbright,

  Then there is no Starbright,

  Then there is.

  Suddenly it’s so… .silly! It’s so… .funny! The stickman is singing, the barbarian is singing, the mountain man is singing, the beautiful girls are singing. The Double Barrel Boogie Band—it’s really them—they’re singing, “First there is a Starbright, then there is no Starbright, then there is.”

  She laughs and laughs. The trees sway to the beat and clap their leaves. Clouds in the sky rearrange themselves into lizards, butterflies, sea dragons. A multicolored checkerboard erupts across the grass and arabesques sprout in the dandelions.

  Ecstasy! Everything is connected to her, she to everything, and it is so beautiful. The trees, the clouds, the singing people are so beautiful. She feels so much love for the world, for all these wonderful people, for the Summer of Love that she starts to cry again.

  Stan says, “Don’t cry, Starbright. Stop it right now.”

  Stop it, yes! Stop it right now. No more pain, no more sadness, no more anger, no more fear. She will celebrate! Celebrate the Solstice! She is bold now, filled with wild abandon. She flails her arms, shakes her hips. She swoops, she dives. She can have anything she wants!

  She is laughing, leaping, free.

  Dance, Starbright, dance.

  *

  The first star of the evening winks on the east, and night stains the sky. Susan is chilled again, very chilled. A lifetime seems to have passed in this day. She has realized something totally amazing. She tries to remember what it is, exactly, this amazing thing, but she can’t quite put her finger on it. Her thoughts are tumbling, tumbling.

  The awesome explosion of consciousness is gone, but the world is still luminous, numinous, streaked with mystery. Afterimages dance in the movements of objects. Professor Zoom hands her his corncob pipe. She takes it, examining the knobby stem curiously. He guides the stem to her lips. She opens her mouth and inhales. What else is there to do?

  The night ripples with shapes, with feelings. Nothing is real? Reality is nothing?